Cyber safety expert calls for action on Warrnambool Facebook sex site

Victoria Police has received complaints about a Warrnambool Facebook page where people rate and share information about sex partners. A cyber safety consultant is calling for complaints against the page to be taken seriously.

The administrator of a Facebook page calling for people to rate sex partners' performance asks people to message them their "dirtiest sex stories from all around Warrnambool".

The messages are then posted on the page's Facebook wall for almost 1,200 of its followers to see.

Similar "name and shame" pages have been created in other parts of regional Victoria including Ballarat and Mildura.

Cyber safety consultant Susan McLean says these types of "vile and vulgar sites" have popped up in many areas around the state.

"They're quoted as sites where you can rate someone's sexual performance but I can guarantee that probably 90 per cent of the stuff is made up."

Ms McLean says the site is breaking the law according to section 47417 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code, which states that it's an offence to use a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence.

While the average Facebook user is unable to find out who started the page, she says the police have the ability to obtain that information.

"Victoria Police and police forces all around the world , through their processes and that's obviously the legal processes ...can quite easily serve a warrant on Facebook and Facebook will of course hand over all of those details.

"The other thing police can do worldwide is that they all have access to a dedicated email straight to Facebook where they can ask for this file content to be removed."

Ms McLean says she was the first Victorian police officer appointed to a position involving cyber safety and young people and identified that online bullying was an issue as early as 1994.

However she says Victoria Police is still not dealing with the problem.

"What I see and what I repeatedly get calls about is the police's failure to act."

She says police officers do not understand laws against cyber bullying.

"There has been no training given to rank and file police in Victoria in relation to how to deal with this."

"They don't understand the law, they don't understand how to apply the law, they don't understand the issue so they can't empathise with the victims."

A page called "Warrnambool should realise there is more to life than rating your roots" was created in response to the site.